Planaria worms harmful to humans?

Question
Are Planaria worms harmful to children or adult humans?? My husband just recently cleaned the fresh water fish tank and noticed tiny transparent white worms swimming wiggly in the tank, quite a few of them too!!(hundreds) We have two golden snails, and three fancy gold fish.  What do we do to get rid of this gross worms??

Answer
Hi Charlotte
Sorry for the delay in answering you, I was supposed to be on "vacation", because I knew I wouldn't be able to check back here yesterday.  But I set the wrong dates...Anyway...

No, not harmful to humans or fish.  There is a variety of either planaria or nematodes(can't remember which off hand) that does like to eat fish eggs though, so can be harmful to those.  I would still wash my hands good though after messing with the tank.

From what you're describing, it sounds like you may have nematodes instead of planaria.  Planaria tends to look more like a white/clear colored slug(snail with no shell), and usually you'll see them crawling on the glass.  They also have kind of an arrow shaped head.
Nematodes tend to look like little squiggly worms swimming in the water, and they look like an S when they swim.  Usually you'll see them after doing a water change, or when you stir up the gravel/substrate.

Either way, their causes and elimination is the same thing.  Cut back on the amount you're feeding the fish.  I recommend only feeding once a day, what the fish will eat in about 5 minutes.  Scoop out any remaining food-though this isn't usually a problem with goldfish.  Both planaria and nematodes tend to show up in tanks that are being overfed-too many nutrients in the water.  
Increase your water changes and gravel vacuums to at least once a week-changing out about 25% of the water.  Be sure to get down into the gravel/substrate real good when cleaning also.  That's where they live on the uneaten food/nutrients.  How much gravel is in the tank?  I know most places will recommend having at least an inch of gravel in the tank.  But really, you only need to have about 1/4-1/2 an inch, unless you have plants in there that need a deeper gravel bed.

It'll take some time, but that's really the only effective way to get rid of them-cut back on feedings and increase water changes/gravel vacs.   Plus it helps a bit knowing they're not harmful :)  I have some in one of my tanks(I do tend to overfeed that tank...).  Some fish will eat the nematodes as well, I just saw one of my platy fry with half a worm sticking out of it's mouth :)  They are common in aquariums too.

Hope that helps and good luck!

Christy